Director of Software Engineering

Director of Software Engineering – Project Ares Platform

Location: Fully Remote

Department: Engineering

Reports to: Chief Technology Officer (CTO)

Compensation: $160,000–$200,000, based on experience

Benefits: Generous benefits package, including medical, vision, and dental insurance, a 401(k) plan with Company matching, life and accidental death and dismemberment insurance, HSA (with high deductible plan) or FSA, critical illness, and accident insurance to all full-time employees, along with unlimited PTO and Company-recognized holidays.

Job Summary

Circadence is seeking a visionary and technically adept Director of Software Engineering to lead development for Project Ares—our award-winning, gamified, cloud-hosted cybersecurity training platform on Microsoft Azure. Designed to deliver immersive, on-demand cyber ranges for real-world skills development, Project Ares sets the standard for relevant, engaging, and high-fidelity training to prepare the next generation of cybersecurity professionals.

In this senior leadership role, you’ll combine strategic planning, technical guidance, and engineering oversight to shape the future of interactive cybersecurity training. We're looking for someone with proven experience managing cloud-native software teams and who thrives in a fast-paced, mission-driven environment.

Key Responsibilities

Strategic & Technical Leadership

Define and drive the technical vision and roadmap for the Project Ares platform in close collaboration with executive leadership and the scenario development team.

Oversee the architecture and implementation of the platform’s major components: UI/frontend, game service (player interaction logic), range service (orchestration/configuration/teardown), and backend infrastructure.

Ensure alignment with business goals, security standards, and engineering best practices.

Team Management & Development

Manage and mentor a distributed, high-performance team of software engineers, fostering a collaborative engineering culture.

Grow and scale the engineering team in response to evolving platform needs and organizational priorities.

Provide regular feedback, performance evaluations, and career development support for direct reports.

Platform Development & Operations

Guide the design, deployment, and lifecycle management of Azure-based micro-services.

Ensure reliability, scalability, and cost-efficiency using Azure tooling, Infrastructure as Code, and robust monitoring infrastructure.

Implement and sustain a culture of DevSecOps best practices including CI/CD pipelines, automation, and testing.

Collaboration & Execution

Collaborate outside engineering with scenario developers, QA, and product teams to build seamless user experiences and impactful training scenarios.

Lead engineering contributions to technical documentation, architecture decisions, and engineering processes.

Qualifications

Required Experience

8+ years in software engineering with 3+ years in leadership or management roles, ideally in cloud-based product environments.

Proven experience deploying and maintaining production systems in Microsoft Azure, including Kubernetes-based applications.

Direct hands-on experience or familiarity with:

Frontend: React, JavaScript/TypeScript

Backend: Golang micro-services, Python services

Infrastructure: Azure Container Registry (ACR), Kubernetes (AKS), SaltStack, Terraform, or ARM

Monitoring & Automation: e.g., Datadog, CI/CD tooling, Azure pipelines

Leadership & Communication

Demonstrated leadership and team-building skills with experience managing remote, cross-functional teams.

Excellent communication skills, with experience working alongside technical teams and executive leadership.

Cybersecurity & Education Domain Knowledge (Preferred)

Familiarity with cyber ranges and/or on-demand infrastructure management, user/threat automation tools.

About Project Ares

Project Ares is Circadence’s flagship cybersecurity training platform, providing scenario-based, hands-on learning through a highly interactive cloud environment. Hosted on Microsoft Azure, it brings realism, automation, and threat fidelity to the forefront of modern cyber education.

Why Circadence?

At Circadence, you'll help shape the future of cybersecurity training by leading a passionate team building a platform used to train national security professionals, enterprise defenders, and future cyber leaders. We value innovation, autonomy, and purpose—join a fast-growing team of top-tier AI researchers, software engineers, and curriculum designers to change the world of cybersecurity training.

Circadence Corporation is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We will not discriminate against any applicant or employee on any basis prohibited by applicable federal, state or local law.

Circadence will consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with local and federal requirements.